Ro-ro peace for Pompey
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FEARS of a dispute over roll-on roll-off services on the south coast diminished this week as Portsmouth dockers allowed cargo from the French ferry Arnorique to be landed.
Last week (CM November 19) there were ugly scenes on the dockside as flying pickets from Southampton confronted the crew of the ferry and three French drivers who drove their own trucks off the ferry.
But this week the pickets returned to their bases and freight was flowing steadily from the new service between St Malo and Portsmouth.
The dispute blew up when Brittany Ferries — owners of the Amorique — began the new freight service which the Portsmouth men thought was likely to take away their livelihoods and they were joined by men from Plymouth, Weymouth and Poole.
A new service running from Plymouth to Roscoff also had to be cancelled when the dockers dispute spread to the port.
And an angry inter-union struggle threatened to erupt when militant French stevedores sent a representative to offer support to the Portsmouth men and pickets and counter pickets were set up by rival groups of dockers.
The men have threatened to black over 50 haulage firms whose trucks crossed one or other of the picket lines.
With the arrival of the flying pickets from Southampton came a new dispute. The pickets claimed that the cargoes of fertilizer being landed at the Portsmouth docks should have gone to Southampton, and they claimed that the Portsmouth men were abstracting work from them.
• Many of the drivers using the port passed tne picket lines and took no notice of the threats made by the rival pickets to black their firms.
Southern area Road Haulage Association secretary Mr Albert Simpson told CM. "Once again it is the poor old haulier who is stuck in the middle between the two sides."